Swati Patel and Axel Saenz Rodriguez are Assistant Professors in the Mathematics Department at Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis, OR. Saenz Rodriguez and Patel were both graduate students in the Math and Applied Math Department at UC Davis, where they first met. They are now married and have two beautiful and energetic children. Patel works in math bio, modeling systems arising from evolution, disease dynamics and ecology. Saenz Rodriguez works in probability and math physics, analyzing universal probabilistic objects for one-dimensional interacting particle systems.
Shizhou Xu, originally from China, earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 2024 under the supervision of Professor Thomas Strohmer. His research focuses on the intersection of mathematics and trustworthy artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on fairness, privacy, interpretability, and robustness in machine learning.
Kiseok Yeon joined UC Davis as a Krener Assistant Professor this Fall quarter. His main research interest lies on analytic number theory (especially the Hardy-Littlewood method), theory of exponential sums and its applications, and analytic methods in connection with rational points on varieties.
Aside from mathematics, he loves playing tennis and running. He would love to be contacted if Department members want to do exercise together – he loves all kind of exercises!
Oliver Siebert works in mathematical quantum theory, mainly using tools from functional analysis (including spectral theory, operator theory, operator algebras). Currently, he is interested in many-body theory with applications to quantum information (Lieb-Robinson bounds, area laws), and in non-relativistic QED/Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonians. He completed his Ph.D. in 2021 at the University of Jena under the supervision of David Hasler. Following that, he worked as a postdoc with Marius Lemm at EPFL and the University of Tübingen.
Jared Krandel is a new KAP who will be starting at UC Davis in January 2025. He graduated from Stony Brook University in Spring 2024 and is spending this Fall as a postdoc at SLMath in Berkeley. Most of his work so far has been in an area of geometric measure theory called quantitative rectifiability. He studies geometric properties of rectifiable curves and surfaces through things like analyst's traveling salesman problems, characterizations of uniform rectifiability, parameterizability problems, and more.
Anna Zarkh received her Mathematics Education Ph.D. in May 2024 from the University of California, Berkeley. She holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in Mathematics from Bar Ilan University in Israel. Anna’s research focuses on university mathematics education, specializing in socio-cultural theories, discourse analysis, and micro-ethnographic methods. She is interested in the historical development and effects of communication practices in contemporary academic mathematics.
Isaac Neal received his Ph.D. from the Courant Institute at NYU in 2024. He studies partial differential equations with a focus on fluid dynamics. In particular, his research has delved into the formation of shocks in compressible fluids.
Yoon Jae "Nick" Nho is a Krener Assistant Professor, mentored by Professor Roger Casals. His research is in symplectic geometry and topology, and he is interested in geometric structures that are related to physics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in August 2024, under the supervision of Professor Ailsa Keating.
He is from South Korea, and his hobbies include reading books, watching films, and listening to music.
Chenchen Zhao completed her Ph.D. at the University of Southern California in May 2024, advised by Greta Panova. Her research interests lie in the area of Enumerative and Algebraic Combinatorics. Her dissertation explored the positivity of Kronecker coefficients and the Newton polytope of the Kronecker product of Schur polynomials.
After graduating with my Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 2020, I started working full-time as a Systems Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. I had previously interned at JPL during my undergraduate and graduate years, making the transition to a permanent position relatively smooth. As a mathematician in the engineering department at JPL, I tackled a variety of modeling tasks related to both project planning and operations.
In the years 1992-94, the University of California offered a golden handshake under the acronym VERIP. In 1994, having twice refused the lure, I signed up for VERIP III, making 2024 my 30th year of retirement.
Some of us recall Gary Kurowski, who passed away peacefully at his home on July 26, 2022. Gary was born on March 22, 1931 in Fargo, North Dakota. Summer vacations consisted of spending time at the family cabin on the lake. These experiences instilled a life-long love of being near water. Gary attended schools in Fargo, and then continued his studies at the University of Minnesota, where he graduated in 1954. Like many young men at the time, he was drafted into the army during the Korean War. After his required two years in the army, Gary returned to the study of mathematics.
I retired in 2015 and bear a title of Professor Emeritus for more than 7 years. It is a common belief that after many years of hard work, emeriti enjoy their well deserved rest, not burdened by any formal duties. It may be true in general, but not in my case. I have an impression that never in my life I worked as hard as now. During my retirement I have never stopped teaching.
